Mundus Imaginalis, The World Soul

Imagination is not a detour. Prepare Ye the Way

I love in-between times, like between Christmas and New Year’s, when social expectation falls away, where imagining or not imagining is free to open up.

In the in-between, body and soul can once again find the ancient meeting space, the ever-virgin landscapes that host the Mundus Imaginalis.

Mundus Imaginalis– Magical words. When I came across them in Sharon Blackie’s book, Hagitude, bells rang. Here’s why.

Henry Corbin, a Sufi Scholar, found and introduced them to his friend Carl Jung.

“The Mundus Imaginalis (the imaginal world”) describes a particular order of reality referred to in ancient Sufi texts, which has many similarities to the Greek concept of the world soul. These texts tell us that between the physical world of our senses and the world of abstraction, of intellect, lies another world of the image–– and a world that is just as real as either of these other two. The mundis imaginalis is the stomping ground of the Anima Mundi. It’s the place that all spiritual and transcendent experience comes from. It’s the source of syncronocities of psychic experiences and creative insights; it penetrates into our dreams and other visionary experiences, including the places we visit during deep meditation or imaginal journeying. The imaginal world …communicates itself to human beings through images, so that the act of imagining then becomes an act of connection to it. ” P 229, Hagitude

If the mundis imaginalis is the stomping ground of the World Soul, it is surely a dancing ground.

Jung claims imagination as a real world, alive with reciprocal communication. He wrote, “Every good idea and all creative work are the offspring of the imagination... Not the artist alone, but every creative individual whatsoever owes all that is greatest in his life to fantasy. The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such, it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has every yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.” (CW 6, par 93)

My book, The Art of Ensoulment: A Playbook for How to Create From Body and Soul, explores the ensouled body as the motherboard of imagination.“We are “hard-wired to enter imaginative states where perception is activated by music, rhythm, voice, dance, visual arts, and ritual. Like “apps,” the arts expedite connection to Divine health, wisdom, and love. Rhythmic shaking and movement, particularly “turn us on” to the unitive field.”

Imagination is at the center of it all.

Even when we say, “I’m not creative. I don’t have any ideas. I’m not interested in woo-woo things,” sadly, that is the world we imagine. Lack of imagination is an act of imagination.

Are you free to imagine? It’s not just what you see. Humans have kinesthetic imaginations. Imagination opens when we move, walk, bike, garden.

The landscape of the World Soul, Mundus Imaginalis, is a mere dance, drum, song, and story away.

Carl Jung played with the Spirit World. In Memories, Dreams Reflections, he shares his relationship with Philemon, a particularly close “friend,” an entity of wisdom who existed separately from himself but within his inner world. Jung said, “I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. . . . Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me, he was what the Indians call a guru.  Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche that I do not produce but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies, I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought.” (Center for Applied Jungian Studies)

Are we willing to trust the imagination?

Long ago, and in many societies today, it was normal to converse with healing spirits, guides, and the Great Divine. But to do the community expected everyone to help cultivate and fertilize the dancing ground of the Mundus Imaginalis. Imagination, seeing, sensing, listening, and tuning into our dreams, are not just about personal enlightenment. Imagination is an all-play, a way of pragmatically grounding and communicating with the cosmos.

To trust imagination takes a village.

When a community's imagination is fertile, members can see and share what they see. I know this for a fact. As an arts educator, It is normal for me to witness people activate their visionary modalities and receive powerful, if surprising, support. Some who are most adept in an area of perception or expression depend on the Fertile Playground of Imagination.

As soon as I downloaded the phrase Mundus Imaginalis, I was led to some potent podcasts. The Necessity of Imagination from Living Myth Episode 359. Michael Meade begins with the ancient idea that “nothing exists until it passes through imagination. Imagination is not simply a subjective inner capacity; rather, it is a genuine force of life. In this old way of seeing, the increase of conflicts and intensification of hate in the world can be seen as a loss of soul and a lack of genuine imagination. “

In Joshua Michael Schrei’s beautiful podcast, The Emerald. in the episode For the Intuitives he elevates our imaginative, poetic, animate heart as our most urgent need. This goes way beyond problem-solving. We need to bring body and soul back into play with the World Soul.

Who are your playmates? Is your imagination a guide? Are you synched up with the Mundus Imaginalis?

I created the Art of Ensoulment Playbook to support the centrality and joy of the Mundus Imaginalis. If you are struggling with the darkness and confusion in our world, the Playbook, the Art of Ensoulment Courses, and InterPlay will support your body wisdom.

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I took my time with writing this piece, and I think I’ll just send it along. I am heading over to my space to lead the InterPlay New Years Untensive, where 50 or so of us will Zoom into the Mundus Imaginalis together.

The New Year could be daunting, and it feels to me like there will be breakthroughs from what I am sensing in the places that listen with imagination. Stay tuned.

So grateful for you playmates who are in between old and new-

2024 will be a good year for my imagination. I’ll be sharing more personally about that with paid subscribers if you’d like to be one.